Very few, if any, Spurs fans had heard of Christian Gross when he was unveiled as the new manager in November 1997. Just as very few, if any, Arsenal fans had heard of Arsène Wenger when a year earlier he had first appeared, as if from nowhere, at Highbury. Hurrah, a clever, modern foreign coach at the Lane at last, after all the dreary, dumpy, home-grown Little Englanders we'd had to suffer, like Peter Shreeves, Doug Livermore, Gerry Francis. Oh how our little hearts did beat and our spirits soar. Up your Arse, Arsène. Glory, glory Grossy.

Then he gave that first press conference, straight from Heathrow, during which he produced for no apparent logical reason his tube ticket – a one-way ticket – the implication being that he was here to stay, oh yes, he wasn't planning on a quick return. Then he held it up and waved it, announcing, "I want this to be the ticket to the dreams." I wasn't at the press conference, but when I read about it I immediately clutched my head, screamed aloud and called for the emergency Beaujolais. We'd signed a wally, a wanker, a loser, not a Wenger clone as we'd all hoped. Gross lasted just nine months.

Now, 12 years later, Spurs have had another seven managers and old Wenger is still there. When I go to Arsenal, as I do, being a football fan first and a Spurs fan second, you rarely these days hear the home crowd getting up the energy to shout "Stand up if you hate Totting-ham." We're hardly worth hating, least of all envying any more. Hating Spurs is now left to West Ham fans, when they can be bothered.

I've always envied Arsenal without hating them, which is unusual in football. My son thinks I'm a total sell-out for even going to the Emirates, spending just a penny on the scum, but I don't see it that way. For the last few years, well several decades, Arsenal have played the better football. I don't stand up when they score, and I don't get upset when they lose, because I don't care, either way, as long as it's a good game. Going to Spurs, by comparison, creates more aggravation, worry, nervousness than pleasure, though of course it is interspersed with moments of pure joy. Occasionally.

I envied Arsenal even before I was born – I mean for what they did before I was born. They won endless League titles and Cups in the 1930s, becoming aristocrats of the game. They had a tube station named after them – is that not cool? – and a brilliant innovative manager in Herbert Chapman who introduced numbers on shirts, pioneered floodlighting and introduced new tactics. I envied Highbury itself, with its marble halls, when it became a listed building. All that grandeur and architecture compared with scruffy, dirty, horrible old Tottenham High Road. Thank gawd for Bill Nicholson and the Double team of 1960-61. We did have something at last for the Arsenal fans to envy – but of course it didnt last long, not when Arsenal went on to win the Double three times – in 1971, 1998 and 2002.

Wenger has enjoyed continued success, even if he's done it with a team filled with foreigners, and even if this year he has started to falter. Fourth might sound like failure to Arsenal but its a position these days that Spurs can only dream about. Their new stadium, damn them, is a brilliant success and looks stunning. It gets almost twice as many as White Hart Lane, which means twice as much cash each week. Even the pitch wins prizes, just as the Highbury pitch did. I think Ill have to lie down.